The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry eBook

I believe I have given the exact force of the original,
though the metaphor there is from a gang of slaves,
where the best-looking is placed in front to carry
off the rest. This interpretation, which the
phrase “ducere familiam” seems to place
beyond doubt, is as old as Torrentius: but the
commentators in general reject or ignore it.

PAGE 157.

For, so he fills his
pockets, nought he heeds
Whether the play’s
a failure or succeeds.

Modern readers may wonder how the poet comes to fill
his pockets if the play does not succeed. The
answer is that he sold his play to the aediles before
its performance. For the benefit of the same
persons it may be mentioned, with reference to a passage
a few lines lower down, that in a Roman theatre the
curtain was kept down during the representation, raised
when the play was over.

PAGE 166.

New phrases, in the
world of books unknown,
So use but father them,
he makes his own.

I understand “quae genitor produxerit usus”
not, with Orelli, “which shall be adopted into
use at once, so that people shall fancy that they
have been in use long before,” but, with Ritter,
“which shall have been already sanctioned by
usage,” the distinction being between words not
only in common use but used in literature, and words
in use, but not yet adopted into literature, and so
relatively “nova.” “Father”
of course I use less strictly than Pope uses it in
his well-known imitation of the passage, “For
use will father what’s begot by sense.”

PAGE 172.

PAGE 173.

In words again be cautious
and select,
And duly pick out this,
and that reject.

I have adopted Bentley’s transposition, simply
because it happened to be convenient in translating.

PAGE 177.

Than alter facts and
characters, and tell
In a strange form the
tale men know so well.

Many years ago I proposed this solution of a passage
of admitted difficulty in the Classical Museum.
I take “Difficile est proprie communia dicere”
in its ordinary sense, “It is hard to treat
hackneyed subjects with originality.” Horace
then goes on to say that it is better to give up the
attempt altogether and simply copy (say) Homer, than
to run the risk of outraging popular feeling by a new
treatment of (say) the Trojan story, or a new view
of the chief characters: but that if a writer
still wishes to make the attempt, he may succeed by
attending to certain rules, “si nec circa vilem,”
&c. &c. Thus I make “publica materies”
identical with “communia,” and “privati
juris” with “proprie,” contrary
to Orelli’s opinion.